


As In Heaven, as On Earth...

by Deus_Ex



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst and Feels, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Blink And You Miss It Slash, Bruce Banner/Thor if you stand back and squint, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Depression, Dog Tags, Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Not Beta Read, Past Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Stucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 07:53:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14468253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deus_Ex/pseuds/Deus_Ex
Summary: ...we've been dust since our birth.*****SPOILERS*****The last thing he'd said had been his name.  He'd looked to him, called for him, trusted him...and Steve had let him fall.  Again.  Face braced punishingly against his fists, Steve didn't realize how tightly he'd been holding the dog tags he wore around his neck until he felt the metal digging into his palms, threatening to bend under his obscenely-strong grip.  Relaxing immediately, even his panic was sluggish as he glanced down and registered that no harm had come to the tags.James Buchanan Barnes 32557038 T42 43 0In which the dead are mourned, and the living grieve.





	As In Heaven, as On Earth...

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers ahoy for Infinity War! Last warning to heed if you haven't seen it yet! So go see and it and then come back and have a good nerdy cry with me in the comments, because I have a lot of emotions I didn't ask for and don't want and can't deal with K THNX.

The room is enormous, and well-lit, and comfortable, and warm, and open. But right now, it feels overwhelming, and distant, and cold. There is too much of everything: the space without enough bodies to fill it, the windows through which an oblivious sun shines, the large plush chairs that will never be completely occupied. The light streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows ought to have been the beautiful sort that Wakanda always had. But now, it felt mocking in its unabashed brightness. The silence was perhaps more torturous than the screaming: in the silence, he could only hear his terrified voice.

_"Steve...?"_

He wanted to rage and scream and tear the entire world to pieces and he also wanted to break down and weep and eat a bullet. But instead he just sat, numb, empty, feeling everything by proxy, nothing truly registering with him except that he was _gone._ Gone, again, because of his failure. Never strong enough, never fast enough, never _enough._ And how many others had they lost because of his inability to pull his team together, to lead them, to devise a plan and order his men and pull off victory in the face of seemingly-inevitable defeat as he always had? They'd found Vision's body. Okoye had come stumbled upon them as she blindly crashed through the woods, calling desperately for a king who did not answer. With her were M'Baku and Banner, the former every bit shocked and bewildered and stricken and the latter on the verge of despair himself. Where was Thor, Banner had asked, and he looked more relieved when Thor emerged than when Natasha did. With Thor came Rocket, a raccoon unlike anything Steve had ever seen, someone who would normally fascinate him but today could garner no more than a second glance. Rhodes staggered out of the wreckage then, revealing that Tony and young Peter Parker were among those yet unaccounted for, as well as Stephen Strange. The bile rose in Steve's throat as the chorus rose around him: people discussing who was confirmed dead.

Thor had seen Wanda disintegrate. Rhodes had seen Sam go. Rocket had borne witness to Groot's demise. Okoye had reached for T'Challa as he vanished. And Steve...Steve had taken that one, single, lurching step towards Bucky as he disappeared from the earth like he'd never set foot on it, had watched helplessly as the only thing he had left in this life was taken from him, and then almost tripped over the body of another friend, their only hope, and then heard of the deaths of so many others...

And now they sat in T'Challa's throne room, the seat of honor respectfully left vacant. None had heard from others of the royal family, Okoye explained with careful and fragile composure. No one knew how Shuri and Ramonda and the others of the Dora Milaje had fared. With her arrival in the throne room their small band of survivors was deemed complete. And they had all fallen into deathly silence.

_"Steve...?"_

The last thing he'd said had been his name. He'd looked to him, called for him, trusted him...and Steve had let him fall. Again. Face braced punishingly against his fists, Steve didn't realize how tightly he'd been holding the dog tags he wore around his neck until he felt the metal digging into his palms, threatening to bend under his obscenely-strong grip. Relaxing immediately, even his panic was sluggish as he glanced down and registered that no harm had come to the tags.

_James Buchanan Barnes 32557038 T42 43 0_

He almost vomits at the surge of guilt and agony that pierces him at the sight of those tags. The memory nearly destroys him as he washes over him, so fresh, just hours ago, but feeling like another lifetime, another thousand years in the past. Crippled by the emotion, his only choice is to surrender it.

_They'd stolen away into an empty weapons supply room. Bucky needed a decent gun anyway, he'd said, so the excuse was based in truth. The moment they were alone, though, the door safely shut, Steve had wrapped Bucky in his arms so tightly even Bucky, matching his strength, couldn't get enough air in his lungs. Gasping slightly, but not fighting, adoring the burn and the lightheadedness, the feel of Bucky's body arching into his would be forever seared into Steve's mind. Capturing a kiss that Bucky would beg for, Steve held them both together for as long as he possibly could before having to let go and step back._

_But Bucky's hand lingered. One slung around his shoulders, the other on his chest. Dead center, over his heart. Without thought or hesitation, Steve mirrored the pose, stepping in to rest their foreheads together, toss an arm over Bucky's shoulders, and place his palm over the heart that had been granted several miracles to still be beating. "This is gonna get messy, Steve," Bucky had said, eyes lowered and body beginning to coil with tension again. Muscle memory assisting him, Steve's hand found the back of Bucky's neck and began to knead at the muscle there, encouraging the tightness to bleed out of the fibers. It helped._

_"We're gonna need all the luck we can get," Bucky continued, barely pausing even at the ministrations he eagerly pressed into._

_"I don't need luck," Steve assured him, "it's always let me down. Besides, I have you."_

_This drew a weighted, but honest laugh from Bucky. "Yeah, well...a little more never hurt, right?" And Steve was blessed with those blue eyes meeting his own, and he couldn't help but smile in return._

_"What'd you have in mind?"_

_Bucky shrugged a bit, the way he did when he really wanted something but really didn't want to say it. "Remember what the Howlies used to say about going into a fight," he started, voice both lighter with affection and deeper with the burden of memory. "You always wore your best guy's tags going into battle. For luck."_

_And the smile he wore then was twisted and heavy as well, but so pure in its affection that Bucky seemed to reflect every ounce of it back at him. "You wanna swap?" he asked, and Bucky ducked his head almost like he was_ embarrassed- __

_"I mean...I know you still wear yours."_

_Steve had taken them off without a second thought. Lovingly placed them around Bucky's neck the moment Bucky's head lifted from removing his own. Shared another kiss, this one chaste and tender, while Bucky clasped his own tags around Steve's neck. And then they stood again, hands over each other's hearts, feeling them like so many tons of bricks, the anguish and uncertainty plaguing them but never breaking them._

_"Until the end of the line," Steve promised. It was all he could bear to say. Bucky had always been stronger._

_"I love you, Stevie. Until the end of this line, until the end of every line. I love you to the end of the line and back. And I swear to God, if we get our asses out of this mess, I'm taking your last name."_

He'd laughed at that, and the crushing sensation had lessened slightly. Such relief felt like it was light years away now. The only piece of Bucky he still had, the only proof that his best friend had been here and not even left behind ashes to scatter, were these battered tags that he held in his palms.

Somehow, he couldn't accept that as his reality.  
\----------------------------------------------------------------------------  
Tony was the miracle Steve hadn't dared hope for. Arriving in shockingly anticlimactic fashion with a woman with blue skin and a terrifyingly-android appearance, both of them looking haunted and weary, Tony bluntly and detachedly delivered more news. Peter Quill, Drax, Mantis, and Stephen Strange were all dead. Caught up in Thanos's unholy rapture. Gamora was dead, sacrificed by Thanos to acquire the Soul Stone. It was because of Peter Quill, the self-proclaimed Starlord, that their mission had failed, Tony explained. Here, there was a harsh edge more like Tony, and it was the barest comfort as Steve listened. Peter had loved Gamora, he told them, while the blue android woman stood silently and averted her eyes. And when he learned that Thanos had killed her, he had been unable to control himself. In a rage, he'd struck out against Thanos, thus shattering the control Mantis, Parker, Strange, and Stark himself had on the Mad Titan. Once more, ire rose in Steve, hot and quick. It was easy to blame Quill, but deep down, Steve knew he would have not have reacted so differently were he in Quill's place, and Bucky in Gamora's.

After Tony's debriefing, which Steve heard all of and registered none of, they all scattered again. Leaving mostly in twos and threes, huddled together for support, Steve found himself fleeing out one of the side doors and ducking into a smaller hallway off of the main one to sink down against the wall, squeeze his eyes shut as tightly as possible, and will the blossoming panic attack to fade. They all had them, he'd discovered: they'd all seen and done and endured unimaginable things. They all carried the scars. Breathing deeply centered him the most: listening to the steady whoosh of his breath, feeling the strong expansion of his chest, seeing his hands stop shaking. A few moments after he'd regained control, Natasha appeared as though summoned and offered him a needless hand up. He took it, just to feel someone else's flesh against his. Without Bucky, he didn't know when the next time would be.

Natasha walked him to a room he didn't know, didn't see; she sat him down on the bed, and pressed something small and unyielding into his hands. "Tony had this," she told him, her voice uncharacteristically soft even for her whisper. "He wanted me to give it back to you...tell you he wouldn't be needing it anymore."

Opening the fingers she'd curled around the object revealed a small flip-phone, an ancient incarnation of a cell phone with only one number in it. A call-forwarding number, not even a real one, but one that would allow Tony to reach Steve if need be. If he didn't need it anymore, that could mean two things. Either Tony was back and back for good, or he was never going to speak to Steve again under any circumstances, the death of half the universe be damned. Steve was embarrassed and ashamed to find that he wasn't sure which he'd like more right now.

"He's staying," Natasha supplied helpfully. It ought to have helped, but it was still a long way from easing the ache in his chest.  
\----------------------------------------------------------------------------  
It took them several weeks to finally get to the point where they were speaking. It evolved, Steve found: from stinted, awkward, half-sentences muttered back and forth to easier but strictly-necessary communication to little comments here and there to actual conversations. Shockingly, it was Tony who initiated The Conversation. Steve had been admittedly quite cowardly about the entire affair, beating around it and dodging it and refusing to look it in the face. But Tony...Tony, being Tony, saw what was going on and grabbed the bull by the horns.

"Are we ever _actually_ going to discuss what happened?"

The sigh Steve gave him was every bit as broken as he suddenly felt. Like a shattered mirror hastily and sloppily taped back together, and now with all the tape come undone, he felt like a million sharp edges in a too-small container. "Eventually," he admitted. "But it's..."

"If you think stewing in it is less painful, by all means, do so. But instead of stewing in both the deaths of literally everyone _and_ the fact that we almost lost each other in multiple ways how about we eliminate one?"

Any protest had shriveled up and died in Steve's throat. Tongue thick, mouth dry, lips numb, he nodded and somehow choked out, "Yeah. Yeah, okay."

And it was painful, as all penance was. It was brutal and unforgiving and harsh. But it was what they needed. At the end of the day, apologies were made and sympathies were exchanged. They both agreed, the following day, to hold a ceremony to honor all of the dead, both recently and long-deceased. If nothing else, it would perhaps be closure.

Tony hugged him after. It felt like ripping open an old wound.  
\----------------------------------------------------------------------------  
In the end, it was Natasha who comforted him the most. Sitting in the abandoned, ravaged hut that had been Bucky's for his months of recovery, the two of them sat in companionable silence as the sun set on another ironically-beautiful day in Wakanda. At least now it was no longer setting over the ashes of their fallen comrades. The dead had, at last, been laid to rest.

"How are you and Tony?"

Steve offered her a noncommittal shrug. "Okay, I guess," he admitted. "We talked. It's not fixed, but...it's progress."

Natasha just gave him that sage nod of hers that said in a thousand ways that she knew a thousand things that he did not. "You don't want him back."

"No." That, at least, was a question easy to answer.

"You want Bucky."

"Yes." Without question. Without hesitation. She nodded again, and this time, she stood up from the table they were perched on crosslegged. The chairs had been damaged beyond repair in the attack; the village itself was barely standing as it was. A part of Steve wanted to follow her, but another part of him wanted to stay here until the moon rose and the White Wolf howled again.

"You'll see him again," she stated matter-of-factly as she stepped towards the door, crooked from being busted off at least one of its hinges. The skirts of her dress left behind sweeping trails in the copious dust; the fiery sunset streaming through the broken roof illuminated her in a warm light that reminded him of when her hair was red. "I promise." Her smile was every bit as radiant as the sunset, and held so much confidence that Steve was just so utterly compelled to believe. Still, reality had been a teacher whose lessons were hard learned, and Steve couldn't resist asking what made her so sure. And she just shook her head and told him,

"Rogers, all of us standing here have died before. We are the first generation that does not have to die."

**Author's Note:**

> The last line is actually something my grandfather said to me. He is a chemist by trade, and a brilliantly smart and incredibly humble man. I adore talking to him, our conversations are always so engaging and insightful. I grow as a person every time I talk to him. Anyway, he was remarking on just how incredible the advancements we've made in science and technology are in such a short period of time. He believes that my father's generation is the last generation that *has* to die. It blew my mind, so I'm sharing it with you all. Also, super applicable to the MCU, where nobody is ever actually dead. I just hope that still holds, because I am so heartbroken over this movie and I kinda wanna go start fires.


End file.
